Jimmy Haslam 0:01 

I think as you grow older, hopefully your self awareness improves, you realize I do a few things well, I do a lot of things orderly. Here's mistakes I've made. Here's a couple of good things we did, and you learn from them. And I find people find it much more. I hate to use the word appealing. I'm not sure what the right word should be, but they enjoy that more when you say I really messed that up, and here's how I should have handled it.

David Novak 0:30 

Welcome to how leaders lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learnings so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Well, at long last, the NFL season kicks off this week. That's right. Football is back, baby. And to celebrate, I'm sitting down with Jimmy Haslam, Chairman and Managing Partner of Haslam Sports Group, and the owner of the Cleveland Browns. If you've ever wanted to know what it's like to own an NFL team, then buckle up, because Jimmy really knows how to make you feel like you're right in the room for all the big decisions and pressure packed moments. But what really impresses me about Jimmy is how honestly he assesses himself and talks about the things he could have done better. I'm telling you that kind of vulnerability is unusual. Too many leaders try to spin their missteps or sweep them under the rug entirely. But if you want to improve anything, your culture, your results, or even the Cleveland Browns, it starts with assessing yourself and being honest about what needs to improve. See how it's done in this conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Jimmy Haslam,

I want to start out just by congratulating you. You know, you you own the Cleveland Browns. You had a playoff entry this year, and you know you're getting geared up for, I know, to build a Super Bowl team. What's it like to be an owner of a playoff team? Well, it's a lot more fun than than being an owner of a team that you know is not winning many games. So somebody asked me all the time what it's like to be an NFL owner, and I say it all depends on if you win or lose. If you win, it's more fun than anything, and if you lose, it's a lot less fun. So, but it's a privilege to be part of the NFL, and we feel very blessed. You know, when you're the owner, what's it like to be the owner on a playoff game versus a regular game is, did you approach it any differently? Jimmy,

Jimmy Haslam 2:35 

no, we really did. You know, we've, I'm ashamed to say, in the 12 years we've owned the team, we've only been in two playoffs games. Fortunately, they've been in the last four years or three playoff games. We won one and lost two. And there's no doubt it's a heightened level of tension, anxiety, focus, etc, because everybody realizes the stakes are so high. But the first excitement is just being in the playoffs, and the second is you want to win when you're looking back, what do you see as the real key to the turnaround and the fact that you you are now a point where people are saying you got one of the best defenses in the league, and you're ready and primed to really make a run for it. David, making the transition from business to sports was much more difficult than we thought it would be. You had a tremendous amount of success in leading and running a business, and we'd had a reasonable amount of success, and you just assume that translates normally or naturally when you ran Yum, I'm going to venture to say you knew more about most parts of the business than anybody else, and that's why we were when we ran Pilot Flying J and you Come into sports, and there's like, well, I don't know what too deep safety is, I don't know what zone is. I don't know what wide zone is. You don't know the terminology. And so you lay back maybe a little bit more than normally, and but it's no different than when you ran young. You have to have the right people in the right place. And I think in the NFL, that's certainly general manager who's in charge of getting your personnel, your head coach, who's in charge of using the personnel the best they can, and then your quarterback, which is so important in the NFL. And it took us a while to get that right, but we now have a really, really good GM, really, really good head coach, and we think a really good quarterback. You know, I want to take you back a little bit and just tell us the story of how you became the owner of the browns? Yeah, there's, as you know, David, there's a lot of luck in life. And my dad had been a college athlete, played football at Tennessee, and we grew up in Knoxville, which you spent a lot of time in Louisville as a college town. And so we were around sports, particularly Tennessee Sports, a lot, and we always said we wanted to be involved in professional sports. So in the late 90s, my dad, my brother and myself and some business guys we knew in the Knoxville area bought the double A baseball team of the Toronto Blue Jays, the Tennessee Smokies, and we had that for several years, and then we were fortunate enough to buy 10% of the Steelers, and that was just a wonderful experience. Matter of fact.

We won a Super Bowl and went to another Super Bowl. The sealers were really good then, and it was a great privilege to get to know the Rooney family and the NFL called us back in 2012 and said, Would you be interested in owning an NFL team at the time, Dee was still running our business. I was her business. I was running Pilot Flying J I said, Well, depends on where it is. Needs to be somewhat in the eastern part of the United States. And they said it is. And they said, Okay, we need to financially qualify you. And somehow, David, we passed that. I'm not sure how,

but then they called on July 1 and said, Okay, it's the Cleveland Browns. And you may have heard me told this story before, so I called Dee because she knew that was going to get the call that day. And I said, it's the Cleveland Browns. And she said, Well, why can't we get the Miami Dolphins?

It's not like going to the grocery store. You can't say, I'll have one of these, one of these. But we were very fortunate, and the learners who owned the team before us did not want to run a process, so they let us negotiate. The NFL did with them unilaterally for a month. They let us pay for it over a period of time, and we were very fortunate to be able to own the browns and are very thankful for it as a business person, how did you and D really look at the opportunity? I mean, were you licking your chops, or did you say, man, we're gonna have to fork out a lot of dough here. I don't know if it'll pay out. I mean, how'd you look at it as a business proposition. David, I'd say all of the above. First of all, we were clueless in Seattle, and what we're doing, okay, you have, there's nobody, I don't care how smart you are, that when you take over an NFL team, you really understand the business side or the sports side. But I remember calling my dad and said, Okay, here's the deal. It has zero EBITDA, maybe even negative EBITDA, and they want a billion dollars. And he goes, Well, that makes a lot of sense.

So you have to adjust your sights. Fortunately, the business has grown and the business of football has gotten a lot better, but it's a fairly extensive learning curve. And I've watched some business people come into the League after we did, and almost all of them, it takes a little bit of time to get your sea legs understand. Like I said, the business side and the football side, you know, you talked about the importance of getting that General Manager and then getting the head coach, and you got to have that franchise quarterback these days if you're really going to get to the mountaintop, you know. And I love to get into the head of how leaders make major decisions. And can you tell us what went into your decision to bring Deshaun Watson into as your franchise quarterback? Yeah, it's a really great question, and we spent an unbelievable amount of time on it. We drafted Baker Mayfield back in 2018 and Baker had some early success, and then after the I guess it was the 21 season, we did not feel like he was the guy. He's gone on to do well with some other teams. So we're happy for Baker. And really, I'll be honest, did not have a lot of options, and we thought to win a Super Bowl, to contend at the highest level, you had to have a really good quarterback. And so Deshawn, in a very unique set of circumstances, was available on the market, and you're going to have to pay a lot, and you're going to have to give up a bunch of draft picks. And it was really between Atlanta, Carolina, New Orleans and ourself. And he actually eliminated us first. Deshaun was born in Gainesville, Georgia. He played at Clemson. He had played at Houston, the only time he ever played in Cleveland, David, it was about 30 degrees and the wind was blowing 50 miles an hour, and we beat him 10 to seven. So he didn't exactly have a great feel for it. So we had done a tremendous amount of background work on Deshaun. Dee and I actually flew up to Clemson and spent the greater part of a day with Dabo Sweeney and his wife, Kathleen, went to their house, and they were really very important in convincing us that Deshaun was a good person. They loved him. Kathleen called Deshaun his fourth son, and so the combination of a really, what we call a blue quarterback, that's as high as you can be rated, being on the market caused us to step out and take Deshawn. He the first year he was suspended. Most of the year last year was hurt, but we're confident he'll come on and be a really good quarterback, but it was a really exhaustive process. And of course, anytime you do something like that and stick your neck out, you're going to catch a bunch of grief, and we expected that. It's never any fun, but that's part of the drill, and like said, we're excited to have him as part of our team. Now, you know, you mentioned that when you make a move like that, you always get some criticism. There are people look at and say, Oh, you shouldn't get this guy for this reason or that reason. You know, how do you as a leader go about really handling criticism? You ran a large public company, and you're always going to catch criticism, and our family's pretty high profile. My brother's Governor Tennessee, my dad's a high profile guy, so we were used to being in the limelight, but I don't care what you say, nobody likes public criticism, and so you just kind of hunker down and sustain it, and, you know, over a period of time, hope things work out, but it's not fun. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, you got to kind of grow that thick skin, which is pretty hard for all of us to grow. You know, as the owner, how do you work with your team to assess what's needed to go to the Super Bowl? We rate all the positions by importance. Quarterbacks, obviously the most important, I won't tell you what we think's the least important, but we rate them, you know, one through eight, whatever there are, the most important, we pay accordingly, and we focus on two things, the most important positions, and our positions in need. We're getting ready to head into the draft, which is next, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We've spent a lot of time. We've identified our needs, and hopefully we'll get the players that will help us fill those needs. You know, you hired Paul Podesta. I hope I got the name depodesto, okay, of and he's of Moneyball fame. I mean, he understands how to how to manage contracts and get the most for the teams, but he spent his entire career in baseball, and now he's your Chief Strategy Officer for the browns, what gave you the confidence to look to someone on the outside to help develop your strategy? I think that's where going back to business helps. And David, you can relate to this. As the technology changed, I used to walk into one of our stores and I'd say, Well, how many of these are you selling? And they would say, a ton. Well, you know, how many? Is that right? And then as the technology improved. I'd say, Well, how many of these are you selling? And the guy could pull out a little handheld and say, well, we sold four today. We sold 42 this week. And here's our margin. And so using data to help you make decisions is what we were used to in our regular business world. And so when somebody introduced us to Paul and he brought that same theory, let's use data to help us make good decisions in sports. It just seemed to make sense. He's really, really bright, works hard and has zero ego, so he's a great guy to work with. And I'm sure, as you're doing this, you have to kind of be top secret. You don't want everybody know the approach that you're taking, right? And you know, what do you think he brings without giving anyway? The top secret, what competitive advantage do you think he's bringing you in this environment? Well, first of all, Paul, as I said, is extremely smart. And second of all, he's very strategic, and he plays the long game, and that's where he has helped us so much, and he he's a tremendous thought partner for myself, for the rest of our family ownership, as well as for our head coach and our GM, Kevin Stefanski and Andrew Berry, because he has done a lot and seen a lot. He was general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers at 29 years old. So he's seen and done a lot in the sports world. So you know, you come in from Pilot, he's coming in from the baseball world with that fresh vantage point from two totally different industries. How do you think that's really changing the way, how the Browns are moving into the future? Well, I think initially we had a lot of swings and misses, if you will. Because Paul was new to football. We were certainly new to professional sports and football, but I think now that we're all on the same page, and that's personnel, ownership, coaching and Paul, it's much easier, and a lot of it David is just common sense, but using the data to help. You know, we all think our gut is really good, and sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. And the more you can employ data to help you make decisions, the better off you are. And one of the things that we brought to the Browns that has helped us a lot is we now test we don't test our players with this test, but we had a personality test. We used it pilot, and put tremendous credence in it. So we use that unbelievably, when we hire anybody on the business or sports side, and all of us have strengths and all of us have weaknesses, and it really analyzes the person really well. There's a cognitive part of it which is very helpful. So we use that for everybody. And what we found in hiring David is that I think most of us naturally put too much weight on the interview itself. And there's a lot of people who interview well, but maybe aren't that competent. And so what we found is the testing we do and the references are more important than the interview we would we would rate it, testing body of work, references, and then a distant fourth, the interview itself. And when you hire in sports, David, it's different than, let's say you needed a new CFO at yum. Well, you did that over a pretty good period of time. Well, in sports, you have, like, a two week window. It's very public. The agents are leaking who you're talking to, and by the way, seven or eight other teams are trying to hire a head coach or a GM at the same time. So it's a very inexact science, and that's why we contend there's so many mistakes made, because it's, it's a terrible process. I'll just say that. I don't know that it'll ever change, but it's what we've tried to do, is put as much process into it as possible. You know, you talked about the importance of looking at the long run, and speaking of the long.

Run the draft is coming up, you know, and you know, what's your involvement in those upcoming personnel decisions? Yeah, great question. First of all, I don't watch any tape, okay? So I just, I don't like to do it, so I don't watch any tape. But where we come into play is, we'll agree that strategically, these are needs, okay, these specific positions I don't get involved in. We should pick David over Jimmy or Jimmy over David, but we'll ask questions about and some of the basic questions are, does he like football? Okay, what's his injury history? You know is he got a good work ethic. How smart is he? Etc, just not that our guys haven't done a good job, and we go through a really good exercise where we literally have all kinds of, what we call mock drafts. And you know, the first bit we have the 54th pick, and you know, we'll run through all kinds of exercises. Okay, this player and this player are available at 54

this player, the two three guys we weren't are not available. We want to trade back. Same thing with our next pick at 85 so and we're not unique. I think it's becoming much more of a process, rather than people just trusting their gut on who the best player is. Where will you be on draft days? Jimmy, we'll be there. You know, everybody thinks you're in New York, or we will not be there. We're in what we call our ironically David, real clever name, our draft room, and we'll be in there with our head coach and our personnel people. We've got four or five different TV screens on and watching the action and making live decisions right there, so that we'll be sitting in there with our guys. And it's a lot of fun, but it's also a very tense moment, because you zero in on this is the person you want, and you're 10 picks away. And every time somebody picks, you either pound your fists on the table because you're disappointed, or breathe a sigh of relief and hope you survive another pick. So it's an interesting, fun, somewhat nerve wracking process to go through. It's got to be amazing. You know, I want to talk more about how you're leading at Haslam Sports Group, but let's shift gears for a second, and I want to take you back a little bit. Jimmy, what's the story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today? Great question, I would say, for whatever reason, my dad early on, thought I had at least a reasonable amount of potential, and he pounded in me the importance of being humble and treating people well, particularly the people that do the smaller jobs. So the waiter or waitress waiting on you, the person at the car wash, the person doing whatever. And I think that's a great lesson that I carried over. And when I was at pilot, I used to go and meet with just like you did. I'm sure David, our general manager, and his management team actually in the restaurant, and I like to observe how he treated his team. And if the maintenance guy, who has an incredibly hard job, cleaning showers, cleaning parking lots, was leaving for the day I wanted to see did He say, Hey, David, really appreciate it. Did an awesome job. I'll see you tomorrow at eight. Or do you just let the guy walk by? And so we preach that continually, that a lot of those people have really tough lives, okay, financially, and just, I will say other stuff. And what I challenged our team is the best eight hours of that person's life. And this might sound strange to some people, was the eight hours that he was he or she was working at Pilot Flying J and it was our job to make them feel good about themselves and develop into the best person they can be. And that's what I picked up early from my dad, and what we preach continually at Pilate. Yeah, that's that's such great insight there. And just pausing for a second, you know, the first time I met you Jimmy, I go, you know, man, you're a dynamic guy, but if you met Jimmy Haslam for the first time, you'd think he was a starting safety for the Cleveland Browns. You're in awesome shape. Did you play football when you're a kid? I did not have played high school football. Wanted to play college football, David, but was not good enough. So

Speaker 1 18:56 

you're staying in shape, which is really good. And so you get out of college and you start your career at pilot, and after 20 years with the company, your name CEO, how'd you get yourself prepared for that role? I mean, you know, you're in a family business. I'm sure a lot of people are going, Okay, you're gonna be the heir apparent, but 20 years you had to grind it out. I mean, what was your view about how to demonstrate that you should have that job and get prepared for that job. Yeah, well, I think it's, as a lot of your guests have said, this is a great country, okay? And my dad bought a gas station in 1958 for $6,000 and over a period of time, we turned it into the fifth largest privately held company in the United States, thanks to a lot of great work by our team members and a lot of luck, quite frankly, but I grew up around the dining room table. I mean, you know, when I was growing up and in my teens, we had 30 or 40 gas stations, it wasn't a very big business, and so my dad would take us on trips. So I was naturally ingrained. I went to University of Tennessee. I worked at the business when I was in college, and there was no doubt that I was going to go.

Jimmy Haslam 20:00 

To to work at pilot once I got out of school, and so it was a natural, and I made it known to my dad very early on that I wanted to be the president. And he said, Well, I'm not ready not to be the president, but he was great to work with. My brother, Bill, worked with us at the time, and it's just something that I always wanted to do, and feel very blessed. And I remember, I'll cite you an example, and you probably had it similar. I was really the chief operating officer for five to 10 years before I became President, and I was on a public company board with a guy named Don Johnstone. He ran Magnavox, and he was one of those professional managers, really good at what he did. And he and I were walking out of the board meeting. He said, Hey, congrats on being CEO. And I said, we know I've been COO for 10 years. It's a family company. It's not, it's not that big a deal. And he said, Oh, yes, it is. And you know, when you're the person at the top versus the number two person, it is way different. That was a another great lesson that I learned from somebody with a lot of experience, but as you know, leading and running an organization, you and I have probably have a bias toward business sports, no matter what it is, is just a great honor, but it's an unbelievable challenge, and it you know this, it takes a lot out of you. You have to give everything you have every day to make things work. And feel very blessed to have gotten to done that at pilot. Well, you put your heart and soul into it. Frankly, you had incredible results when you took over as CEO. I I think your your fuel sales annually were about 125

million gallons, and today it's like 11 billion gallons of fuel per year. What did you as a leader? And here comes the pun. What do you think you did to really fuel that kind of growth that you had, because you had a ton of it, I think several things. One, over a period of time, we collected a really good team. And you know this because here again, you ran a big company that helped us tremendous. We had really good people around us, and we do a lot of things poorly, but I think we are opportunistic, and so when those opportunities came along, we jumped on them. And through a strange set of circumstances, our primary competitor, Flying J declared bankruptcy in December of 2008

and the founder's daughter was the person responsible for it. She was not the CEO, and I started calling her in January, she finally agreed to meet with me in May, and convinced her that putting the companies together made sense, and that was a game changer for us in terms of elevating us in the industry, allowed us to attract better talent, and that that really changed the world for our company and our family. And her name is Crystal magalet, great friend today and her family also. So you sit down with crystal, you see this opportunity, how did you diagnose what you had to do to get crystal over the line? Well, let me say this. I was like, You know how in high school and college, you called some girl 50 times to go out, and it was no, no, no, no, no or no call. That's why it was for a long time. I'll never forget I was in one of our truck stops in Pennsylvania. I looked down, I thought, dang, Crystal finally called me back and she said, Hey, why don't we get together? And I need to be out on the West Coast in a couple of weeks. But I distinctly remember this. I think you'll appreciate this story. We met at a Salt Lake City restaurant. That's where spline J was based at about 130 on a Friday afternoon, and it had a paper tablecloth, and she was very wary of us. I mean, we were heated competitors, and all her team had said they're not good guys. And we sat down and we found out we had a lot in common, right? She was second generation. I was second generation. Her dad started one gas station. My dad started one gas station. So we had more in common than one might have thought. And she said, Well, tell me how this would work. And so I laid the whole thing out on the tablecloth. Okay, the meal had been cleared, and she's a great poker player, and I had no idea if I was doing any good at all, until, you know, we paid, we get up and she said, Hey, do you mind if I take the tablecloth with me?

So you just I guess. I'm not sure what happened if we hadn't had the paper tablecloth, but we were lucky, and it worked out to be a great partnership. That is great. Did she keep it and frame it? Obviously, she took it, and I don't know if you all when you were young, bought anything out of bankruptcy, but it's a challenge. And so it was very complicated. She had all kinds of advisors, and there were lots of times that I thought the deal would fall apart, but she recognized it was best for her company and family. We were the same way. And you know, if you persist long enough, you know that meeting was in May of 2009

and we closed the deal on june 30 of 2010 so it was a like all big deals. It was a battle, but it was worth it. And learned, I learned a tremendous amount about financing, about bankruptcy, etcetera, etcetera, going through that process.

So you're the CEO and your brother, as I understand it, it was the president of the company, and as you mentioned, your brother, Bill has gone on to be the governor of Tennessee. So you're both Titans. I mean, you're both got to be AAA batteries, you know, to a certain extent there, you know, how did you make that dynamic work? Well, it's actually and I think Bill would say the same things, because we're very close now. I think when we were working together at pilot, we were younger, in our 20s and 30s, and I'm not sure I'll say this bill. I think Bill would say the same. I think I could have handled it better than I did. I think we were looked at each other a little bit more as rivals, rather than as brothers and owners of the company, and that's how we act right now in the various business we're involved in. And Bill actually always has had a heart for public service. He went to Emory in Atlanta. Is by far the smarter the two of us. Dad has a great saying, David, I think you'll like he said, Bill made one be in college. And he hesitates. He goes, Jimmy made 1b. Also, so

he clearly was a better student. And he almost went in the ministry, almost went into teaching, came to work at pilot in 1980 I think, left in 99 worked with our good friend Brad Martinez Sachs for three or four years, then came back and was mayor of Knoxville for a term and a half, and then very successful governor of Tennessee for eight years, and just did a tremendous job making our state a better place to live. You know, a lot of leaders have split priorities, and in your case, you're running a multi billion dollar company, when you acquire this sports franchise, how'd you find the right balance? Well, I didn't. That's why we did so poorly at first, you know, we we bought it in late in 12, and in our first two, three years, we kind of did okay. And we decided okay, finishing out of 32 teams, finishing somewhere between 14 and 22 really doesn't get you anything. So we decided to tear everything down. And we went two years and won one game, and that was a really, really hard time for the organization and our family. And when we initially bought the team, David, we did not spend a lot of time in Cleveland. We had a home there, but Dee and I were both running businesses out of Knoxville, and we did not give it the proper amount of time. Didn't have the right people in place. And it wasn't until we you know how it is you get out of something which you put into it, and we weren't putting enough in and we struck that balance, I think, much better 1819, 20, and then I sat down as CEO at the start of 21

and had really taken a little bit lesser role in, you know, the 1920 time period, and that's when we started spending a lot more time with the organization. By then, we had bought the Columbus Crew, and I think got the right people in place, and hopefully are setting ourselves up for success, although I will tell you, winning games in the NFL is very hard.

Peyton Manning 27:55 

We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Jimmy Haslam in just a moment. You know you can't talk about the NFL and great quarterbacks and Tennessee Sports without also talking about the one and only Peyton Manning. I had a chance to sit down with Peyton, and just like Jimmy, he talks a lot about the importance of honest self assessment so you can find every possible way to get better. Most of the time, I'm I'm kind of starting with me saying, Hey, I didn't do my part the right way. This was a mistake on my end. I have to be better. I think you got to start that way. When you come in pointing fingers and blaming, saying, You guys didn't do your part right? I think you've lost the room right away. It's we. You know, football is very much that way. Sometimes the media can try to divide a team, right? You have the Broncos offense, the Broncos defense, like it's two different teams. No, no, no, it's one team, right? We lost together. So I've tried to take that same approach as to what can we do better, but also being very honest, right? And having a debrief on what we just did, right? Eli and I do that Monday night show on Tuesday, we have a debrief. Hey, this part was great, Peyton, this part wasn't so good, right? You were talking too much whatnot. So, hey, hit me straight, right? Give me feedback, writing my notes down, figuring out how we can do it better the next time, that's the only way to go about it, I think. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Peyton, episode 104 here on how leaders lead.

David Novak 29:31 

You have really impressed me in this conversation with just your openness about, hey, struggled at the beginning, didn't do the job I was hoping to do, you know, learn stuff that I needed to learn. You know, how important do you think it is to be as vulnerable as you are and to just basically open up and just say, hey, you know, I could have done better. A lot of, lot of leaders don't do that. I've only known you for two years, and so I don't know.

Jimmy Haslam 30:00 

You were 20 years ago. But I think as you grow older, hopefully your self awareness improves, you realize I do a few things well, I do a lot of things orderly. Here's mistakes I've made, here's a couple of good things we did, and you learn from them. And I find people find it much more. I hate to use the word appealing. I'm not sure what the right word should be, but they enjoy that more when you say I really messed that up. And here's how I should have handled et cetera, because we, I mean, I made a lot of mistakes at pilot too. So you know, I think you learn every day, and you and I are privileged to hang around some sensational older gentleman, if you will, at Lost tree. And what impressed me most is how intellectually curious. They are their drive to grow their faith and how they want to get better every day. And they're 8889 years old, and that's that hour we spend together on Monday morning is I would pay a lot of money to be part of it, and we get to do it for free. So yeah, you know, they're great role model. I can't speak for you, but they're great role models, certainly for me. You know, how much I think of everybody in that group. You know, in fact, Jimmy and I are in a Bible study, and we, we meet at 630 every Monday morning down in Florida and and you're a man of faith, Jimmy. I mean, how does it impact the way, how you lead? Well, I think I'm much better than I was. And I think you've heard me tell this story, David, I think you were there that week. Is that I grew up going to church every Sunday. And I think you told me you were baptized a million different places, if I remember, right? I went to the same church, but grew up like that, Dee and I got married at an early age, you know, I taught Sunday school, raised money, did all the stuff, and they went in. My husband, about 40, I just kind of got tired of church, and Dee was disappointed, and she took me to an evangelical church. I grew up in Episcopalian, which in Episcopalian, you kneel, sit, stand, all on cadence, and you go into evangelical church and people are waving their arms or singing in the aisle. You know, the choir is much different, and I was very uncomfortable. But also thought, you know, there's something good going on here, and had the good fortune of meeting a pastor at the time, Doug banister, who's still a great friend, and he started working with me late Friday afternoons, and he is, by nature, a teacher. You probably had the same thing. I have a whiteboard in my office, and he really set me up. I was such a sucker. He said, tell me how your life works. And so I put my initials in the middle and picture a bicycle wheel, and I had a bunch of spokes going out to the side. And because I'm with him, I put, you know, God, then I put family and friends and work, etc, etc, working out. And he said, Do you want to know what being a Christian is all about? And I said, Sure. And he took the JH, which I had in the middle, and put JC in there, meaning Jesus Christ. And he said, That's what being a Christian is all about. And I just froze. And he said, Do you think you can do that? And I said, you know, I'm not sure I need to think about it, because it was I've always struggled with thinking about myself and putting myself first. And this was a, definitely a paradigm change and over a period of time. And you know, David, it's a work in progress. We're all imperfect, right? I mean, some nights I go to bed and I go, what were you thinking? Why'd you do that? Why'd you say that? You know, can you not keep your cool better, etc? But it's helped me. It's helped our marriage. It's helped me be a better father and grandfather and I hope, a better friend. You are all those things. And you know, you talked earlier when you were coming up and pilot, how you talked to the front line basically, and you really understood all the nuts and bolts of what the business was all about. So you step into this new industry professional football, how'd you go about learning the business so that you could become that successful franchise owner? You know, slowly, like I said, because at first, I was doing it 20% of the time, and it's too hard to do that, and I still I'm not an expert on football. I think I know a lot more than I used to, but it just takes time. You have to learn, and just like you, we ask a lot of questions, and you spend time with your key people, getting to know them, both personally and professionally. And we're very blessed to have very talented people, but they're also very high quality people. Were you able to pick up some learning from your fellow owners? Or are they pretty close in

it depends if on business. They'll talk to you about anything on the sports side zero Dan Rooney, who was ambassador to Ireland and one is one of the finest man I ever met. He's the one that came up with the Rooney Rule. It's just a superb human being. And for whatever reason, when the Steelers brought in minority partners, there were four of us. Mr. Rooney was always super nice to me, and I sat next to him at meetings, went to away games with him, had dinners with him. And when we were going through our first coaching search, I thought, well, several of our candidates had been in the Steelers organization at some point in time. And I told the guys, I'll call Mr. Rooney. He'll tell me anything. And I called him up. We exchanged pleasure. He said, What can I do for you? I said, I want to ask you about X, and he goes, You should interview him. And I said, I want to ask you about y. And he goes, You should interview him. I said, Well, what about z? And he goes, You should interview him. I said, so you're not going to tell me anything. He goes, No.

I found out quickly, you don't get hardly any help on football. That's a little embellished, but you really are, and it took me a while to figure this. You really are partners. And so there's 32 partners who own these teams and own the league, and it behooves us all to work together to do what's best for the league. And that's what Mr. Rooney always said, Do what's best for the league, and if you do that, things will work out. And I think we do a good job. Could probably do some better, but a good job of that in the NFL, could you put us kind of in the meeting of an owner's meeting? I mean, in the room, can you put us in the room of owners? What's that like? I mean, you want to talk about 32 people who've been successful in life, you know? Yeah, it's actually, there's parts of it where you roll your eyes, there's parts of it that are boring, and there's other parts that are fascinating. It it's interesting, it's challenging. You have 32 people are used to getting their way. You've got to learn how to negotiate. I think Roger does a really good job of, when there's a big issue, of generally, letting everybody have input, whether it's a big group or smaller group, before we vote on something. And people get aggravated, because oftentimes there's a lot at stake. What do you think has been the biggest decision as an owner group that you've been a part of, that you're most proud of?

Hmm, that's a great question. David, I would say it's not one, but I'd say it is the general thrust of safety first. Every decision we make in the NFL, safety comes first, and then how does it affect the game comes second, and I think the concussion issue, we've done an excellent job of continuing to improve that, and we're working with the helmet companies there now. David, if you play offensive tackle, you're going to wear a certain kind of helmet. If I play wide receiver, I'm going to wear a different kind of helmet. We've changed the kickoff rule dramatically, and we're changing again this year, because we found the kickoffs where the play people got hurt the most on and suffered the most concussions. So that continual thrust toward how do we make the game safer is probably what I don't want to speak for the other 31 owners, but certainly what we're proudest of. You know, as I understand it, Jimmy, you know, Berkshire's now the full owner of pilot, but for decades, the haslib name and pilot have been synonymous. So you know what's that been like for you to give up your baby? It's been hard, and it didn't quite work out the way we thought things would, but that's kind of how life goes. Sometime it's been hard. I don't know I didn't know you when you left young, but I suspect you were like me. Every morning, you got up and you looked at the sales and were either happy or sad, depending on how they were the day before. And then you worked all day. And then that night, you probably looked at some more stuff, where you went to bed. And on January 14 of this year, I woke up and I had already told them, Don't, don't show me anything. I'm not an owner anymore. I woke up and there were no sales to look at. And I miss that. I miss being in the stores and talking to people. Tyler's getting ready to have their big general managers meeting in a couple of weeks. I miss going to that there'll be two, 3000 people. You've gone to a million meetings like that. It's a lot of pep rally and some teaching, but it's a great time to interact with a lot of people. And I miss, I think you used to wear a uniform too. If I remember, I wore a forever I wore a shirt with pilot on it, and I had a name tag, just like everybody in the store, because I thought that was the right way to set a good example. And I miss interacting with those people tremendously, I really do. Because, you know, you go through you run a business. There's some good times, some bad times. You get to know people you know, and personally, stuff happens to their kids, you know, etc. And you form real bonds there. And you know, you I went from seeing those people a lot to not hardly seeing them at all. You built this rocket ship of a business. I mean, top five privately held company in the United States, which is truly amazing when you look back at it. You know, some things didn't necessarily go like you wanted them to. That's my case for sure, you know. But what would you say is the toughest thing you ever had to do, and how'd you handle it? No question. April 15, 2013

the federal government came into our building in Knoxville and accused the organization and a bunch of members of our sales team of cheating customers. It was by far the hardest day of our lives, and everything from we had never had anything. I mean, we might have paid $100,000 fine for an EPA violation, and so to have something like that. And they initially thought I was involved, and so I had to hire a criminal attorney. And I thought, wait a minute, I got two criminal attorneys, and we're going through all this. And I had to manage the personal part. But the bigger thing was to and this was the ultimate test of leadership for me, Dave. And I learned a lot is everybody in the company was looking at me like, Is he okay? Is the company okay? Are we okay? And I'll never forget, the government actually had us leave the building, and they called me about 1111, 30, and said, you can come back in. And I went back in and literally stayed the whole night, took shower there at the office. And the next morning, I was thinking to myself, is everybody going?

To show up. You know what I mean? Because the publicity was horrible, and everybody showed up, and then you went back to work in our business. Not to give you too much detail, petroleum business, you pay for your product in 10 days, and you turn it in three so you create a gigantic float. Well, all the oil companies took us to cash only. So we had to go talk to the oil companies. We had to go talk to the banks. We had a mortgage a bunch of our properties, so the banks would hang with us. And then, of course, if you're a trucking company and you read, well, they've been cheating people, you had to do that. We had to revamp our entire sales team. So it was two or three years of really, really tough sledding, and I'm really proud of how we recreated the culture in the sales team, the traumatic growth the company, I think, made three times what it made in 2013 is four or five times bigger of how we're able to turn things around. A lot of our key people that some of them have left, some of them are there today, really stepped up, took much bigger roles, and it was the ultimate test. I would never wish it on anybody. I wouldn't want to do it again. But it was a tremendous learning experience. You know, when a culture gets off track like that, what is the biggest thing you think you had to do to get it back on track? Well, first of all, I had to look at myself in the eye, because I'm the guy, right? And so how did that happen? And so I did a pretty thorough self examination of myself, and found out that I was had gotten way too transaction oriented, David, way too growth oriented, and not enough relational oriented. So you have to do that. And then I think you have to restore confidence, first of all in the organization. And then, unfortunately, we had some bad apples. You had to change them out and bring the right kind of people in. And I'll be honest, we didn't have the right systems and processes in place to prevent something like that from happening. So you got to spend a lot of time in technology, I guess. What I'm most proud of that was on April 15, we brought our entire audit team, 3540 people back in from the field, people that usually audit stores, and we audit every single customer's account, and we paid back $55 million now that's over a 10 year period. I know it sounds like a lot, and I'm not minimizing we paid back $55 million of of quote, overcharges that there was ever any doubt we paid the higher amount by July 1. And so in two and a half months, we had paid everybody back, and that's what, beside getting the company on track, I may be more proud about how quickly we moved and how quickly we paid everybody back, because it was not a good situation. Well, getting back to the Haslam Sports Group, you know, you've got the Browns down. You're pushing them towards the Super Bowl. You bought the Major League Soccer Team, the Columbus Crew, in 2018

they go on to win their league in 2020 and again, in 2023 you've had a lot of success there. Did you learn anything managing the brown so you think that helped you buy the crew and get better results, no question. And here again, it's about all about getting the right people in the right place. And we're fortunate to hire an individual who was the general manager of the Toronto MLS team. He was from Columbus. Wanted to come back, Tim bez Pachenko. He helped us put in place the first team. That team aged out a little bit. We changed things over dramatically, and we're lucky enough to win a second championship. We changed out coaches last year. Have, I think, the top coach and MLS, and so that that experience of getting the right people in the right place moving quickly when you don't is definitely something we learned from, you know, the various challenges we went through with the browns. And now you've purchased the Milwaukee Bucks, you know, which is a fantastic franchise as well. Are you able to leverage any synergies across these totally different categories, I think, particularly on the business side. And I just want to clarify, we own 25% of the bucks, and our partner, Wes, Edens owns 25% we have another great partner, Jamie Dino owns 25 but Wes and I split control of it, so it's a partnership. But yes, matter of fact, last year, the Browns went to the Greenbrier, a place I'm sure you've been to a bunch for training camp. And so we brought Wes owns part of the Aston Villa Premier League team in Europe. We had the MLS crew. My brother owns the predators in Nashville. We had the bucks and the browns. And we all came in, and we spent one day brainstorming on what everybody could do better from a business standpoint, and lots of good ideas came out of that. The team still talk frequently. So there are synergies there. I'll be honest. Synergies are more difficult. We're part of three sports teams. Unfortunately, they're in three different towns, and so they're more difficult when everybody's there right together. But there's synergies from costs and synergies from best practices, and I think we're doing a reasonably good job of taking advantage of it, and we do the same on the sports side, the bucks and the browns and the crews trade information like medical like, what are you doing about this? What are you doing about that, those type of things. And so there are definitely synergies there. Yeah.

You mentioned earlier, you had to fork out a billion bucks to get the browns. And I think Forbes estimated the value of the franchise now at $4.2 billion you know, and you've created an incredible amount of value with the browns. What advice can you you give to leaders on the keys to creating value and whatever you happen to run? Yeah, well, let me say this, I think we've done some good things at the browns, both on and off the field, but we're also part of the NFL, which is a juggernaut. Okay, 93 of the top 100 shows on TV last year were NFL, so we've benefited from that huge rising tide. But if you were going to ask me, I'd say, figure out what's important. Really focus on those things. Don't get distracted by other stuff. Get the right people in place. But I think so many I'm not a work from home guy, David, and I suspect you're not either. And people say, Why? One of the questions I ask people all the time, let's say I passed you in the hallway. I'd say, David, where'd you go this week? Or where are you going this week? Because I want to know how you're spending your time. And if you were going to two or three stores where we didn't do any good and they didn't make any difference, I'm going, Well, why are you going there? Or you were so I just think how people spend their time is really important, and those hallway conversations and casual conversations are worth a lot in setting the pace and setting the tone, but focusing on the right thing is unbelievably important. And some people have that gift, and some people don't. You know you mentioned it, the NFL is an absolute juggernaut. You know, one of the great brands in the world without Without question, right? What have you observed watching the brand building of the NFL that you think other leaders should think about? I will give Roger Goodell credit. Roger is relentlessly focused, and he is unbelievable at I remember when we're going through the media renegotiations, he didn't worry about anything else, because he knew how important that is. Same with labor negotiations. We're working on a opportunity, maybe to let institutions by part of the NFL. So I think he and his team by part of the NFL teams. I should say he and his team are relentlessly focused on what are the major things that can drive the NFL forward. And sometimes it's safety, like I talked about, but if you think about it, they've done a phenomenal job of creating windows for people to watch football. When you and I grew up, there was football was on at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon, and there were eight or 12 teams and that's it. And then you had two games on Sunday, and now you have three, and then you have Monday Night Football, and now Thursday night football. And after college quits playing, we play on Saturdays. We play on Black Friday. And Amazon does that, the NFL is going to open up with a game in Brazil this year on a Friday night. And so the NFL used to yield to the NBA Christmas Day. Now the NBA, or the NFL, played three games on Christmas Day. Each of them drew over $30 million so they're continually looking for ways to engage fans. The other thing they've done is they've made it almost a year round sport, if you think about it, you come back to training camp in late July, and it's all abuzz. And you have the exhibition game. Season starts in September, Super Bowl's in February. You have free agency in March, the draft in April. They release the schedule in May. June is kind of the only dead month, and so they keep everybody really focused on the NFL. They've done a tremendous job. And people ask me all the time, David like, what's the biggest difference in business and football? I said, Well, way more people know how we did on Sunday with the Browns than they did with pilot. And so you have that. And the other difference is that's frustrating, is, let's say your CFO at yum pulled a hamstring playing tennis this past weekend. Well, that didn't really affect him on his job. He might miss a day or two. Well, like our star player for the bucks, pulled a calf muscle, and so he missed the last few games. Might miss a playoff game or two. The injuries and sports, you just don't have them in business, you know Jimmy, you and you and D have developed a pretty simple mission for your sports franchises. It seems to seems to be working and only get better as you get better at it. You know, you call it win community and fan. Can you expand on that a little bit and explain how that focus came about? What we know from all the surveys we do and we survey our fans after every game, when you win, we get the best scores. Okay, the hot dogs are better, the beer is colder, everybody's happier. So winning is the best thing you do. The second thing we try to do is take great care of our fans. And the third thing we try to do is be an integral part of the communities we're involved in. I think we've built 15 artificial turf football fields in inner city high schools in Cleveland, the fields weren't very good, the lights weren't very good, the stands weren't very good, and they cannot only use it for football. They can use it for soccer, lacrosse, et cetera. Dee has been extremely involved in the community, so I think winning on the field, taking great care of your fans and giving back to the community, if we can do a good job.

Speaker 1 50:00 

All three of those, and we're fulfilling our mission. You know, Divi, this has been so much fun, and I want to have a little bit more with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Yes, sir. The three words that best describe you, I would say hard, working and focused. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be and why? You know, I vacillate between business and some of the business. Stupetars and leaders, I would probably say Winston Churchill, what's your biggest pet peeve rude people, particularly people who are rude to the smaller guy who would play you in a movie? Oh, I'm terrible at that. David,

Jimmy Haslam 50:40 

I have no idea. It's not Brad Pitt. He's like a good looking

David Novak 50:45 

your favorite sports memory?

Jimmy Haslam 50:48 

I grew up around sports, growing up in Knoxville, and I would say Tennessee won the national championship in football, which was a real thrill in 98 and year before last, they beat Alabama, an unbelievable football game that a tremendous amount of people watched, and what made that great was we were in the crowd, and I had four of our five grandsons with us, and so to be able to share that with them was great. I would say, beating Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh in our first playoff game in like 10 years was a tremendous thrill, because that's a great franchise and a hard place to win. And this year, we beat the jets on december 29 in a Thursday night game. Had a big TV audience, and that put us into the playoffs quickly, I'd say. And then the two MLS cups we won are great thrills. And what you see David is, and probably more in sports than business, is the people that work hard every day, the players, the coaches, the scouts, they're so excited when you win or you win a championship, you win a playoff game, you qualify for the playoffs. You're so happy for them, because you know how much time and effort they put into it. You okay, your biggest perk of owning a sports team,

that's a good one. There's a lot of them, let me say that I would say access to I'll be careful how I say this. Almost anyone, when I was with pilot, did a lot of legislative work in Washington, you probably did the same. And I just noticed, once we own an NFL team, they would spend unlimited amount of time because they all wanted to. Most people are sports fans. They all wanted to talk sports.

What's the most challenging part of owning a sports team? The winning and losing, it really is because it's there's nothing. David, you ran a public company. We ran a private company, and if you missed earnings by a penny or two, it's, you know, or made it by a penny or two. Might been a little dip in the stock, but it's nothing in the world sports is pass, fail, and so you either won or you lost. Now there's ties in soccer, but you either win or you lose, and that pass fail nature makes it really tough. If I turned on your radio in the car, what would I hear? Well, I never listened to the radio, but if you want to know what music I listen to, it's country, and it came from my youngest daughter, who played a lot of tennis and softball, and I spent a lot of time driving her around the South back, I guess that would have been in the late 80s and 90s, and she was a country music fan, and so she converted me to one.

Okay, what's something about you? Few people would know I would probably say that, that I like country music.

So you know, you and your wife Dee, have done so much for others, and you truly give back. And I'd love to have you talk about Haslam giving and some of the projects that you're working on right now. You know? Well, first of all, both of our fathers were that kind of person, and my dad has been both the leading giver and the lady leading fundraiser in Knoxville for as long as I can remember. So we grew up that way. And what Dee has, if you've raised a lot of money, and David, I suspect you have that means you've asked a lot of people for favors, and sometimes you have to pay them back by giving to their contribution. And maybe you're given to things you don't care quite as much as other things. But what she's done is really focus us in on three or four causes in in Tennessee, it's the University of Tennessee, and the Haslam business scholar is College, which is named after my dad. We've started a program called the Haslam leadership scholars, which you were nice enough to talk to. So those things. And then we've been really, really involved in school choice. We think the greatest social injustice in the country today is inner city kids who have no other choice but to go to the school near them. And so we're we participated in a group in Chattanooga that ran 12 schools, and we're starting an all boys inner city school this year in Knoxville, along with my brother Bill and his wife Chrissy, start with fifth grade, and we'll work up so education focus number one, there's a big piece of property into in Knoxville called Lakeshore park that was part of an old mental health institution that we've converted into a big public park, ball fields, open areas, walking trails, running trails, etc, that attracts over a million people a year. There's some Inter.

Speaker 1 55:00 

Ministries, so we've tried to keep it focused. But there's a lot of great needs out there, as you know. David, yeah, absolutely. And when you think about it going forward, Jimmy, what do you see as your unfinished business? Man, like to get the Browns the Super Bowl,

Jimmy Haslam 55:17 

but I don't that's not. I mean, listen, there's luck and skill and make that happen. Really want that for organization, and we have unbelievable fans, so that would certainly be one, but I think just continue to grow as a person, whether that's as a husband, as a father, as a grandfather, as a friend, and make a difference. I'll refer back to the some of the people you and I are fortunate to hang around with at Lost tree, to be like them and way up in age, be impacting the country in a positive manner. That would be a, I think, a really high goal.

Last question for you, what's one piece of advice you'd give to someone who wants to be a better leader? Be intellectually curious. Ask lots and lots of questions. I mean, there's so many smart people around. I don't mean this to sound selfish, and if you and I went to lunch or dinner, I would ask you as much about leadership as I could, because you're really good at and you spend a lot of time perfecting it, and are continuing to try to learn more about leadership. I just think asking a lot of questions, you are an amazing guy, Jimmy, you know you're so accomplished in everything that you've done, and you've never forgot where you come from and where, how people need you, and you constantly give back. And I consider it to be an honor to be your friend. Well, likewise, and you don't even know this, but when you ran young, we hired some Pepsi guys to work with us, and you were legendary for the handwritten notes the radio treated team members the amount of time you spent in the stores, and that's something we've always tried to emulate. And so to get to know you personally here over the last two or three years has been a real privilege. All right, I look forward to a lot more of those times together. Yes, sir. Thank you, buddy. Thanks, David, great to see you, man.

Unknown Speaker 57:02 

You

David Novak 57:07 

it wasn't all that long ago that the Cleveland Browns went oh and 16, but last season, they made it to the playoffs. If you're trying to drive a big change like that, it starts with taking a good, hard look at what needs to improve, and you've got to set the example like Jimmy does, and say, Hey, here's what I could have done better in this situation, and here's what I'm learning because of it. That's what I call climbing up the accountability ladder. That kind of honest self assessment earns people's trust and respect, and it's a secret to improving anything. So now I got to ask you, how can you apply this insight in your week? Maybe you need to review a past project and see what you could have done better. Maybe you can get vulnerable with your teammates and share what you've learned from past mistakes. It's not always comfortable, but I know that when you develop the skill of honest self assessment, you're going to be a stronger, more capable leader. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders assess themselves honestly. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Chris riccobano, CEO of untuckit and greatness wins. A lot of people say I'm intense, but it's really just passionate about the product, and when I'm out there marketing on Instagram, it's not because I want to be the face of the brand or I want to be everywhere. It's really not the reason. It's because I just feel like I'm going to convince you. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader you can be. You